John Hill – Honolulu Civil Beathttps://www.civilbeat.org
Honolulu Civil Beat - Investigative ReportingSun, 20 Jan 2019 10:01:09 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.2Injured Workers Still Searching For Reliefhttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/12/injured-workers-still-searching-for-relief/
Fri, 28 Dec 2018 10:01:20 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1313980Part of an ongoing series about Hawaii’s workers’ compensation system. A year ago, Jay Dela Pina spoke to a Civil Beat reporter about his struggles to get treatment after injuring his lower back working as a hospital custodian when he bent over to pick up a bucket full of solution and mop heads. Over the course of […]

A year ago, Jay Dela Pina spoke to a Civil Beat reporter about his struggles to get treatment after injuring his lower back working as a hospital custodian when he bent over to pick up a bucket full of solution and mop heads.

Over the course of several years, the workers’ comp carrier had blamed his injury on a pre-existing condition, and then, when that was discredited by a state hearing officer, denied his doctor’s plans to fix his back.

He’s still struggling.

Since Dela Pina first talked to Civil Beat, his insurer approved a doctor’s request to get an X-ray and MRI. But then it denied a different type of MRI that the same doctor requested to determine whether he’d benefit from surgery. Dela Pina would have to get his lawyer to request a hearing at the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations to try to overturn the denial.

In the meantime, his physical problems mount. Now his left side has started to hurt, perhaps because he’s been compensating for discomfort on the right. His leg sometimes gives way. A few weeks ago, he fell down some stairs to his carport and the pain got so bad he went to the emergency room.

“I just want my life back,” Dela Pina said. “I get jealous because people get to go to work. It hurts me to see my wife come back from work, and I’m home.”

Over the past year, Civil Beat described the plight of Dela Pina and many other injured workers in a series called “Waiting in Pain.” They talked about financial struggles, the frustration of living with injuries they believed could be fixed — and even homelessness, depression and attempted suicide.

One year later, many of them have seen little progress.

Jay Dela Pina, who injured his back working as a hospital custodian, has had a serious of health setbacks and has been unable to get approval from his workers’ comp insurer for a type of MRI that his doctor requested.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

In its 2018 session, the Hawaii Legislature failed to approve three bills that would have addressed problems identified in the Civil Beat series. One, for instance, would have required both sides in a dispute to agree on a doctor to examine the injured worker.

As a result, the system grinds on much as it has over the past few decades. Workers’ comp insurers pay hand-picked doctors to write reports that routinely deny that the injury occurred at work or that the worker needs treatment.

A significant number of these so-called independent medical exams, or IMEs, are later discounted, but it may take years. During that time, workers may be cut off with no income or treatment while they appeal the denials, often requiring the help of attorneys. Many decide to settle for far less than they might get rather than keep fighting.

“There has been some improvement in the system,” including faster processing of claims at the labor department, said Scott Miscovich, a Kaneohe physician who’s one of the few who willing to deal with the hassles of treating workers’ comp patients.

“But unfortunately,” he said, “the same select group of worker comp carriers continue to use the system against the patient.”

Trying Again In The Legislature

Rep. Aaron Ling Johanson, chair of the House committee that deals with labor issues, says he’s committed to continuing to try to reform workers’ compensation.

“If people are stuck in this purgatory, how do we get them out?” he asked. “One of the reasons I pursue this year after year is that people are suffering.”

But rather than reviving the same proposals, Johanson is considering fresh approaches for the session that starts in January to get beyond the resistance he seems to encounter at each step.

“It’s forcing me to think outside the box,” he said.

Civil Beat’s investigation focused on the insurers’ use of IMEs, based on an analysis of almost 200 reports over seven years by three doctors hired frequently by insurance companies.

In nearly nine of 10 cases in which the IMEs were cited in disputes before the state Labor and Industrial Relations Appeals Board or appellate courts, the opinions of the three doctors were bad news for workers. They said the injury did not happen at work, for instance, or that it needed no further treatment.

Yet in almost a third of these cases, the labor board or appellate court discounted these IMEs or ruled that the insurer, relying at least in part on the doctors’ opinions, failed to produce enough evidence to block the claim or treatment. From 2014 to 2017, the rate was even higher – about half.

In essence, the numbers add up to this: many injured workers can overcome the results of an IME, but not without a long and taxing struggle during which they may be denied payments or treatment.

For more than a decade, the insurance industry has fought off a dozen bills in the Legislature to require both parties in a workers’ comp dispute to agree on an IME doctor.

As far back as 2000, a committee analysis of one such bill concluded that “every effort should be made to select a neutral examiner with a balanced approach that favors neither the insurer nor the claimant. Those examiners who have acquired a reputation for favoring one side or the other should not be selected.”

Insurers have consistently argued that such a move would only add another layer of bureaucracy. And it would take away their primary tool for making sure that treatment is warranted, they say.

But Civil Beat found that several other states have found a way to allow both parties to agree on a doctor. Some make the opinion of the agreed-upon doctor binding to avoid protracted litigation.

Yet another neutral IME bill in this year’s session went nowhere.

Two other workers’ comp bills made it much farther.

One would have compelled insurers to pay benefits for injured workers while the insurer investigated whether the claim was valid, rather than delaying payments until they were deemed legitimate. In practice, the insurance investigation can go on for months, during which the injured worker may get no benefits.

The other bill that almost made it would have clarified that IME doctors owed the same duty of care to workers’ comp patients as to traditional patients. Some critics of the current system believed this would restrain IME doctors from writing reports tailored to the interests of the insurer.

Differing versions of each bill passed the House and Senate. They were then killed by lawmakers in conference committee, where the two chambers try to resolve differences over legislation.

Despite its warnings about proposed legislation, the industry appears to be doing well. From 1986 to 2017, workers’ comp premiums paid by Hawaii employers have dropped from $8.91 per $100 of payroll to about $2. Hawaii used to be almost three times above the national median, but now is just slightly above it.

Still Waiting

Civil Beat contacted additional workers featured in the series to see how they were doing. They described how their struggles have continued, sometimes in ways that seem almost Kafkaesque.

Michael Makekau recounted in a 2017 story how doctors hired by his employer, Hawaii County, wrote that his respiratory ailments were not caused by mold in the Hilo landfill scale house where he worked.

Makekau countered the IME reports by paying for his own sampling of mold and hiring experts to analyze his medical records. Eventually, after Makekau declared bankruptcy and sold his house, the county admitted that he was injured on the job.

Michael Makekau continues fighting to get disability benefits and medical treatment for respiratory ailments that he says were caused working in a Hawaii County facility filled with mold.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Since that time, Makekau had a CT scan and a pulmonary function test, as recommended by an earlier IME. Then, the county sent him to a doctor to rate his level of permanent disability, which determines how much he will be paid to compensate for his impairments.

In August, that doctor said he didn’t think mold had caused the lung disease, just aggravated it, which mystified Makekau because that was not the issue he’d been asked to address.

“We kind of went backwards,” he said.

Even stranger was that the doctor wrote that Makekau had failed to get the CT scan and pulmonary function test. Since the workers’ comp carrier paid for the testing, he assumed someone would make sure the results got into the hands of the doctor lined up to examine him.

“It’s not my job to find out what that process is and who’s responsible,” he said.

He works two jobs, struggling to get through the day sometimes, and is hoping eventually to get the insurer to pay for comprehensive testing of his lungs in San Diego, perhaps as a prelude to a lung transplant that one doctor said could become necessary.

Daniel Junker, another worker profiled by Civil Beat, was working as a security guard in Kakaako in 2015 when a prowler slashed him with a box cutter in the upper chest and forearm and slammed him against a dumpster.

After an IME doctor attributed Junker’s chronic pain to earlier shoulder problems, his workers’ comp insurer cut off his payments and denied further medical care. But a state hearing officer sided with Junker, appearing to clear the way for treatment, including a complicated surgery on his axillary nerve that would have to be done by specialists in Massachusetts.

At the time the story was published, the insurer had denied a treatment plan from his doctor, citing the earlier IME report that had been discounted by the hearing officer.

Since then, the insurer paid for him to fly to Massachusetts for a consultation with the two shoulder specialists, who outlined the complicated surgery. Including stays in the hospital and a rehab facility, the cost would approach $200,000.

The insurer rejected it. Junker and his lawyer are appealing. “It’s like starting over,” he said.

The only thing that keeps him sane, he said, are his four cats. On a recent morning, one stole a cigarette from his pack and started rolling around on the floor with it.

“They’re more therapy for me than if I went one-on-one with a doctor,” he said.

]]>Court Cases Open Window Into Marshallese Adoptionshttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/12/court-cases-open-window-into-marshallese-adoptions/
Thu, 27 Dec 2018 10:01:02 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1313454Arkansas attorney Vaughn Cordes specializes in adoptions of children from the Marshall Islands, but says he does it legally by working with birth parents who have already established themselves in the United States rather than flying in pregnant women in violation of an international treaty. A Kentucky couple who hired him say otherwise. A civil […]

]]>Arkansas attorney Vaughn Cordes specializes in adoptions of children from the Marshall Islands, but says he does it legally by working with birth parents who have already established themselves in the United States rather than flying in pregnant women in violation of an international treaty.

A Kentucky couple who hired him say otherwise.

A civil lawsuit by the couple, Travis and Kristina Partin, and an ensuing bankruptcy filing by Cordes give glimpses into the scope and nature of Marshallese adoptions normally kept confidential.

These adoptions were the focus of a Civil Beat investigation published in November, “Black Market Babies.”

The Partins allege in the lawsuit that when a first adoption fell through, Cordes told them “that there was a pregnant lady in the Marshall Islands due to deliver a baby boy in December of 2017 that he could fly in for an adoption.”

The offer occurred when the Partins were driving home to Kentucky from Arkansas, according to their new attorney, Josh Bryant. They had just been through some confusing interactions with a Marshallese woman living in Arkansas who had committed through Cordes to place her newborn with them.

Children play in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands. A recent Civil Beat investigation found that despite reforms made 20 years ago to ensure pregnant Marshallese women aren’t flown to the U.S. to give their babies up for adoption, abuses still occur.

April Estrellon/Civil Beat

As they were driving, Cordes called to report that the woman, Jacklynn Aen, had never been pregnant at all and had been defrauding them.

“His immediate follow-through was ‘Don’t worry, we can fly a mother in from the Marshall Islands and have a baby next month,’” Bryant said.

Though the Partins were not aware of the Compact of Free Association, the treaty that bars Marshallese women from traveling to the U.S. for an adoption, they rejected Cordes’ offer, Bryant said.

“They decided it didn’t pass the smell test,” he said.

In a response to the Partins’ lawsuit, Cordes denied offering to fly in a new birth mother. He has declined to talk to Civil Beat about his practice. In November, after being sent a list of questions, he demanded that reporters not contact him again.

A month after the complaint was filed in October, Cordes filed for bankruptcy, listing the $1 million the Partins are seeking as a liability.

In his petition, he disclosed that in 2017, his gross income from his law practice, which focuses on Marshallese adoptions, was $285,000.

Reforms Didn’t Stick

Civil Beat’s investigation found that, despite a series of reforms two decades ago, a handful of lawyers in the U.S. defy the Compact of Free Association to arrange for pregnant birth mothers to fly from the Marshall Islands to give up their children in adoptions.

These adoptions undermine the official protections put in place to make sure that Marshallese birth parents understand the much different nature of adoptions in the U.S. Many Marshallese birth parents believe that their children will return to them as adults or that they are guaranteed to have continued contact. These characteristics of informal adoptions have long been a part of Marshallese culture.

Last spring, Cordes spoke to a reporter for Civil Beat’s podcast, Offshore, which also focused on Marshallese adoptions. At that time, Cordes said he drew the line at working with mothers who were flying straight in from the Marshalls.

“That’s not our policy,” he said, although he added he sometimes represents women who have been flown in by other lawyers and “dumped off” in poor living conditions, prompting their relatives in Arkansas to ask him for help.

Cordes worked closely with a well-known fixer, Justin Aine, who a year ago was stopped at the airport in the Marshall Islands capital of Majuro with two women who intended to give up their babies for adoption in Arkansas. But in the earlier podcast interview, Cordes suggested that Aine, an independent contractor, may have been working with other attorneys.

The Partins, whose lawsuit also named Aine, connected with Cordes on a Yahoo group. According to the lawsuit, they paid living expenses for birth mother Aen, but later were surprised to find out that some of the of the money went to seemingly inappropriate items, such as $180 for bailing someone out of jail.

Before they found out that Aen was not pregnant, the Partins traveled to Arkansas for a court hearing related to the adoption. Aen told them that her boyfriend was angry that all their expense money had been spent. She said that Aine, the fixer, told them to start working with a different attorney, according to the lawsuit.

In a later meeting with Cordes, they say, the lawyer referred to Aine as “a necessary evil.” When the Partins raised questions about birth mother Aen, Cordes said he had no reason to doubt her truthfulness because she had previously placed three children for adoption, according to the lawsuit.

Cordes, in his response to the lawsuit, offers one clue to the scope of the Marshallese baby business. He disclosed that Aine, the fixer, has been involved in 150 “successful adoptions” as an independent contractor. Aine is scheduled to be deposed Jan. 11.

Conflict Of Interest?

The lawsuit faults Cordes for failing to verify the pregnancy. In proposing to match the Partins with a new birth mother from the Marshalls, it alleges, “he improperly advised a course of action that is contrary to the law of the United States (the Compact of Free Association), which an attorney of reasonable skill and diligence would not have done.”

The lawsuit also accuses Cordes of having a conflict of interest in representing both the birth mother, Aen, and the Partins. Civil Beat’s investigation found other cases in which the allegiance of attorneys appeared blurred.

The Partins are asking for access to Cordes’ sealed adoption records. Other adoptive parents who have had problems with Cordes have contacted Bryant since the lawsuit was filed, and opening the adoption records would give a sense of how many might be in a position to take part in a class action lawsuit.

The Partins say they are out $30,000, but are seeking punitive damages of $1 million. They also filed a complaint with the Arkansas office that disciplines attorneys.

At one point, Bryant said, Cordes offered $10,000 to settle the case, which the Partins rejected.

Shortly afterward, Cordes filed for bankruptcy.

Though Cordes reports gross income of $18,950 in the month of October, he states that his income has now “dropped to zero.” He wrote that he is seeking to practice in other areas of the law, “but there is a lot of uncertainty in how much, if any, will come in from month to month.”

He stated that he also owes an unknown amount to fixer Aine and birth mother Aen.

Aen, meanwhile, pleaded guilty in September to defrauding prospective adoptive parents and was sentenced to 20 years of probation and required to pay $14,924 in restitution, in addition to 28 days already served in jail.

]]>Delays, Denials, Wasted Tax Dollars: DOE’s Troubled Treatment Of Injured Workershttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/12/delays-denials-wasted-tax-dollars-does-troubled-treatment-of-injured-workers/
Wed, 19 Dec 2018 10:01:12 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1312892Editor’s Note: This story is part of an ongoing series about Hawaii’s workers’ compensation system. Annette Kanaulu was heading home to Ewa Beach from her job at The Queen’s Medical Center in October 2017 when she got a call telling her to turn around and go back. It turned out her husband Kimeona, a custodian […]

]]>Editor’s Note: This story is part of an ongoing series about Hawaii’s workers’ compensation system.

Annette Kanaulu was heading home to Ewa Beach from her job at The Queen’s Medical Center in October 2017 when she got a call telling her to turn around and go back.

It turned out her husband Kimeona, a custodian at Ewa Elementary School, had been found unconscious on the job and was being rushed to Queen’s.

Kimeona died later that evening of cardiac arrest.

Annette didn’t know much about Hawaii’s workers’ comp system, but on the advice of her husband’s colleagues at the school she filed for survivor’s benefits for herself and her teenage son.

That’s when the Department of Education’s workers’ comp unit got involved, launching Annette Kanaulu on an odyssey of denials and late payments that left her feeling angry and disrespected, even as she dealt with the loss of her husband. DOE still hasn’t paid her for funeral expenses.

“I don’t want to go through that again,” she said. “They make it like it’s your fault. They’re not very caring about people.”

The workers’ comp unit is supposed to help workers injured on the job, making sure that those with legitimate claims get the benefits and treatment they need to recover and return to work.

In many cases, it falls far short.

Annette Kanaulu with her son Imaikalani can prune mui to give to a neighbor. Annette struggled to get benefits from the DOE after her husband Kimeona died on the job.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Civil Beat analyzed about 200 administrative decisions from 2013 to 2018 involving claimants who worked in the schools after hearing from workers’ comp insiders, such as attorneys and doctors, that the state Department of Education’s operation was unusually inefficient and hard on workers.

The decisions were handed down by hearing officers at the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, which administers the workers’ comp system.

The analysis found a number of recurring problems:

The DOE’s workers’ comp unit denies claims that neutral fact finders later rule should have been accepted, in the meantime digging some workers into financial holes and leaving their injuries untreated.

It routinely fails to pay providers such as doctors and chiropractors, who then must decide whether to treat injured workers as the bills mount or cut them off.

DOE’s late payments and rule-breaking sometimes leads to thousands of dollars of fine per case – as much as $20,000 in one case — paid by taxpayers.

The unit forces claimants to go to hearings for no apparent reason, then capitulates without making an argument. In some cases, the DOE failed to attend the hearing at all.

Problems Remain After Stinging Audit

An internal audit in 2015 found sloppy record-keeping and inefficiencies by both the workers’ comp unit and the schools that report injuries to it. The operation relied on a manual process that the audit termed “time consuming and labor intensive.”

Claims managers, instead of assessing medical information and talking to doctors, were overwhelmed with clerical work.

Unlike other workers’ comp operations in the private and public sector, the DOE’s lacked in-house specialists such as vocational rehabilitation counselors, nurses and attorneys.

These inefficiencies led to delays for injured workers.

In 93 percent of cases, for instance, the initial report of the injury was made after the seven-day deadline laid out in statute, mostly when schools failed to forward the reports to the workers’ comp unit on time. The average time for the reports that failed to meet the deadline was 47 days.

Since that 2015 audit, the department says it has made changes to improve service.

Last year’s state budget authorized six new positions, three of them supervisors, DOE spokeswoman Lindsay Chambers said. It upgraded the technology used to track claims, increased coordination between offices to pay bills on time and started working more closely with vendors and others. In addition, the DOE is using new performance benchmarks to curtail service disruptions.

Yet Civil Beat’s review found many cases since 2015 involving the same shortcomings that were common before the audit.

In one recent example, the workers’ comp unit missed the seven-day deadline for rejecting a worker’s request for treatment by three months, and had to pay for massage treatments the department didn’t think were necessary. It told a worker in another recent case that there was no deadline to reimburse her for mileage, then didn’t attend a hearing in which a labor hearing officer disagreed and imposed a fine.

Relying on old medical exams, the workers’ comp unit argued that a teacher shot by a student in 1988 no longer suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. The labor department disagreed and declared her permanently disabled, awarding her lifetime payments and $150 for the bullet wound scar.

A hearing officer required the DOE to pay one worker’s attorney fees after it failed to respond to the worker’s request for medical records. The workers’ comp unit said it had offered an injured worker light duty, but had no records to prove it, and so had to cover his disability payments.

It failed for several months to give a worker the results of a medical exam it had ordered the worker to attend and had to pay a fine and attorney’s fees. It admitted in the hearing that it had “no valid reason” for the delay.

It didn’t pay an injured worker $1,900 in living expenses and then didn’t show up at the hearing to explain.

The neglect and mistakes have taken a steep personal toll on some DOE workers who’ve filed claims.

Workers struggle to keep afloat without income or treatment, and describe feeling cast away by the employer they served.

“I can’t explain the hardship to you. I’m still in a hole,” said Bernadette Ishikawa, a special education aide whose payments were delayed for months. “You have to borrow money from this or that friend. It’s so embarrassing … They don’t care about people.”

Delayed Benefits, Unpaid Funeral Expenses

Annette Kanaulu describes her husband Kimeona, the Ewa Beach custodian who died of heart failure, as a humble man who loved his job and never grumbled about anything. He also enjoyed yard work and did side jobs on the weekends. He’d had heart surgery when he was 12, but never any cardiac problems after that until the day he died at the age of 56.

He seemed fine when he and his coworkers went back to their stations after lunch that October day. Hours later, his boss found him on the ground. No one knew how long he’d been there.

The school was supportive. “They helped me all the way,” Annette Kanaulu said.

But when she filed the required form with the Department of Education, the workers’ comp unit rejected it without citing a reason.

Kimeona Kanaulu, with his wife Annette, died on the job in 2017, but the Hawaii Department of Education still hasn’t paid for his funeral.

Courtesy of Annette Kanaulu

At the ensuing hearing, the hearing officer and Annette Kanaulu, who had to take off time from work, both had all the paperwork.

Even though it was three months after her husband’s death, the DOE representative didn’t have any information on the claim – much to the consternation of the hearing officer, Kanaulu recalls.

After copying all the paperwork for the DOE, the hearing officer set a new hearing for a month later, and sent reminders to the parties three weeks before. Annette Kanaulu took time off work again.

This time, no one from the Department of Education showed up at all.

The hearing officer apologized to Kanaulu for wasting her time, and with no input from the DOE on a major case, issued a decision. The department was liable for death benefits for Kanaulu and one of their two sons still living at home, adding up to more than $260,000 to be paid in installments until 2041.

The DOE also was required to cover funeral and burial expenses of $12,690. The hearing officer told Kanaulu she should expect to hear from the workers’ comp unit about payments two months later, in April.

Spring came and went and Kanaulu heard nothing. In June, she contacted someone at the workers’ comp unit, who promised to get things going. A month later, when she still hadn’t been paid, Kanaulu called again. The claims worker said she’d forgotten to submit the paperwork.

“I said, ‘I’ll bet if it was your family, you wouldn’t have done that,’” Kanaulu said.

The death benefits finally started coming, although Kanaulu said they are often a week or so late.

But she still hasn’t been reimbursed for funeral expenses. (DOE said it could not comment on individual cases because of employee privacy laws.)

Stuck At Home Waiting For A Van

Jo Ann Kahoopii, meanwhile, is still waiting for the van that a labor department hearing officer ordered the DOE to pay for two years ago so she could get out of the house.

Kahoopii, a special education teacher, blew out her back in 2005 trying to help move a cooler that didn’t have wheels. Her condition worsened over the years, with swelling and hypersensitivity in the left leg confining her to a wheelchair. Her doctor says she is unable to perform daily tasks such as washing dishes and doing the laundry.

In 2016, the DOE argued that her impairments resulted not from the work accident, but from a dog bite in 2009.

The hearing officer didn’t agree. He ordered DOE to pay for a van so that she and her husband, Ralph, also disabled by a workplace injury, would not be housebound. The hearing officer also required DOE to pay for an attendant and temporary disability payments.

Former DOE worker Jo Ann Kahoopii, right, is still waiting for a van a workers’ comp hearing officer said two years ago she needed to get around. Her husband, Ralph Kahoopii, was also disabled from a work injury.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Because her husband also needed a van, the parties agreed that DOE would work with his employer, the Department of Transportation, to find one they could both use. Ralph Kahoopii said he found a van that could work and submitted the paperwork.

Then … nothing.

“Two years later and still no van,” Ralph Kahoopii said. (Jo Ann said she was not feeling well enough to talk to a reporter.)

The workers’ comp unit doesn’t return phone calls, he said. “They never answer their phone, never, from the case worker to the supervisor.”

A year after the hearing about the van, a different hearing officer found that DOE had not been paying Jo Ann Kahoopii all of her disability benefits and levied a fine of $441.

But no such remedy was possible for the van delays. A Department of Labor worker researched the statute and told the Kahoopiis that there’s nothing in the law that would authorize the department to fine the DOE for every day of delay in procuring the van.

So the Kahoopiis mostly stay at home. They didn’t go out on their 45th anniversary. For three years, they haven’t been able to join their in-laws for Thanksgiving, as they had been doing for 40 years. They can’t even drive up to the North Shore to watch the big winter surf.

“What they’re doing is deny, deny until they die,” he said.

DOE Delays Cost Taxpayers

Maureen Pescaia, an English and culinary arts teacher in Maui, injured her back and right leg when she fell in 2013.

She missed only a few days of work. But she did require extensive treatment, and so she went to a chiropractor.

The workers’ comp unit didn’t pay him for a year-and-a-half, Pescaia said, as his bills mounted to about $2,400.

“He was treating me for free,” she said. “Luckily, he’s a good man and a good friend and he did it.”

Teacher Maureen Pescaia, with her grandchildren, got a state Labor Department hearing officer to fine the Department of Education for making late disability payments.

Courtesy of Maureen Pescaia

In 2017, Pescaia went to a hearing seeking a 20 percent penalty and attorney’s fees because her disability payments were late.

The hearing officer agreed, slapping DOE with a penalty of $4,647. The amount of attorney’s fees were not specified, but typically add up to several thousand dollars, workers’ comp lawyers say.

Pescaia anticipates that she will need neck surgery at some point. But given her experience so far, the idea of reopening her claim to get approval is daunting.

“I would imagine it’s an overwhelming amount of paperwork without anywhere near enough adjustors,” she said. “Or maybe they need to be better trained. I don’t know.”

The education department’s bumbling can even lead to new claims.

Ishikawa, the special education aide whose mileage payments were delayed, also claimed that she had to deal with late disability payments, which caused bank and credit card penalties, and delays in getting her prescriptions filled. The DOE didn’t pay her medical provider, which she feared could lead him to stop treating her.

All of this stress, she said, caused her pre-existing asthma to get worse, and her doctor agreed.

So did the hearing officer, who ruled that the DOE was on the hook for treating the aggravation of her asthma. The hearing officer also awarded attorney’s fees and costs for pursuing the late mileage payments, which added up to hundreds of dollars.

“It’s never-ending with them,” she said.

She feels bad that, because of the delays, she had to depend on her adult children. Her son, for instance, covered her share of the mortgage. And though he told her not to worry about it, Ishikawa said, “It’s a burden on me to have to depend on my children. It’s really difficult for me to ask for help.”

Bills Pile Up

Justin Hughey, an elementary school teacher in Maui, injured his back in 2016 while trying to lift a case of copy paper into an overhead shelf. His bulging disc gave him so much pain that he lost 30 pounds, he said. He couldn’t muster the resolve to go to the refrigerator for a carrot.

Told that he might never be able to teach again, he started getting physical therapy. But the therapist cut him off after realizing that the DOE wasn’t paying the bills.

Justin Hughey, a Maui elementary school teacher, injured his back while lifting a case of copy paper. He struggled to get DOE to pay his medical bills.

Courtesy of Justin Hughey

Hughey researched the DOE’s process for how to challenge unpaid bills. “I was trying to coach them through it,” he said. “They just didn’t want to go there. I understand that.”

The lack of therapy was particularly galling because he knew he had to show progress to get more treatment. He reluctantly got an epidural, so that he could stand doing physical therapy. When the unpaid physical therapist stopped treating him, it was all for naught.

“I was furious,” he said. “This is something I’ve been told I have to have to heal, and I’m not getting it.”

His chiropractor’s office, though, continued to treat him with massage, acupuncture and back adjustments even as the bills piled up.

The workers’ comp unit eventually paid for one chiropractic treatment after eight months. A massage session wasn’t reimbursed for a year. And one visit to the acupuncturist? It wasn’t paid until a year and four months later.

The DOE wouldn’t pay one bill because the name on the massage therapist’s license didn’t match the name on the bill. It turned out it had taken so long to receive payment that the massage therapist had been through a relationship change and switched her last name.

Mary-Lynne Ludloff didn’t get disability payments for more than a year after the DOE rejected her claim for severe back pain and sciatica.

The school where she worked as a special education aide, Castle High School in Kaneohe, had not lived up to the agreement for years, she said. When the pain became too intense to go on, she filed a workers’ comp claim, mentioning the bad chairs as a cause.

In its rejection of that claim, the DOE focused on countering her complaints about the chair rather than the fact she was injured. The workers’ comp system is supposed to be “no-fault”—that is, in almost all cases, the causes don’t matter as long as the worker was injured on the job.

“The supply of your ergonomic chair is not a workers compensation issue but an employment issue,” a claims manager named Avena K-Aloha wrote.

The DOE asked the labor department for a 60-day extension to investigate Ludloff’s claim. Six months later, with Ludloff still not getting payments or treatment, it sent her to a medical exam with a doctor of its choosing.

In recent years, DOE has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on so-called independent medical exams, or IMEs, including $629,000 in the 2017 fiscal year.

An earlier Civil Beat investigation found that many IMEs are used to cut off injured worker benefits. The IME doctors’ reports often claim workers weren’t injured on the job or don’t need treatment, even though a significant number are later discounted by neutral fact-finders.

As the months dragged on without treatment or the results of the IME, which would determine the DOE’s decision on whether to accept her claim, Ludloff relied on massages from her daughter. The daughter also taught her yoga poses to deal with her sciatica. She ran her credit cards to the limit, borrowed from her adult children and asked two grandsons who live with her to help with rent.

Finally, in November, she got the results of the IME. Even though the doctor had dated the report May 25, claims manager K-Aloha said she somehow didn’t get it until October.

With a labor department hearing on the horizon, the DOE finally accepted Ludloff’s claim and agreed to pay her for the 13 months since she made the claim and into the future.

“It hurts when you know you’ve been such a good employee,” she said. “I think that’s what hurts the most. This is what I get when I’m hurt and miserable. They don’t care.”

]]>One Family’s Marshallese Adoption Odysseyhttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/one-familys-marshallese-adoption-odyssey/
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 10:01:29 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1310406The adoption “journey” of a North Dakota couple illustrates some of the heartache, misunderstanding and ugliness that can occur in the freewheeling world of Marshallese adoptions. It included two failed attempts in which birth mothers were working simultaneously with lawyers representing other adoptive families, as well as accusations that the third child’s serious medical conditions […]

]]>The adoption “journey” of a North Dakota couple illustrates some of the heartache, misunderstanding and ugliness that can occur in the freewheeling world of Marshallese adoptions.

Editor's Note

This is article is part of Civil Beat’s investigative series “Black Market Babies.” Click here to read the other stories.

It included two failed attempts in which birth mothers were working simultaneously with lawyers representing other adoptive families, as well as accusations that the third child’s serious medical conditions were concealed.

Timothy and Roxane Cartwright started out trying to adopt through the official process laid out by the government of the Marshall Islands.

Sofia was adopted by Timothy and Roxane Cartwright in North Dakota after an arduous process.

Courtesy of Roxane Cartwright

They’d already been on the waiting list for almost two years and were finally starting the process when the agency announced it was no longer matching Marshallese babies with families living in the U.S., only those living abroad.

The Cartwrights noticed that people behind them on the waiting list were adopting babies born to Marshallese families already living in Arkansas by working through private attorneys.

In 2016, they interviewed lawyers and settled on one, Vaughn Cordes, known to specialize in Marshallese adoptions. Within two weeks, they were matched with a Marshallese birth mother.

The parties involved give conflicting accounts of what happened next, but the bottom line was this: The birth mother had been working with a different attorney at the same time, and decided to give her child to the adoptive family he represented.

Cordes then matched the Cartwrights with another pregnant Marshallese woman in Arkansas, Angela Emos.

Roxane Cartwright said she and Emos hit it off right away, texting and talking daily.

But before too long, the adoption went badly awry, according to an arrest warrant affidavit in a fraud case later brought against Emos.

Emos routinely asked for money beyond the agreed-upon $1,400 a month. If the Cartwrights refused the extra payments, they told police, Emos would text messages such as “Do you want your baby to starve?”

The relationship continued to deteriorate, with Emos at one point admitting she had been using the Cartwrights for money and promising to pay it all back when she got an expected tax refund, according to the affidavit.

When Cartwright threatened to go to the police, Emos texted, “Please, I love you. And I love my baby.”

After Emos cut off contact, Cartwright told Civil Beat, she noticed a Facebook picture of her with palm trees in the background. It turns out she had started working with a Hawaii attorney, Laurie Loomis, who eventually placed the baby with a different family.

Emos pleaded guilty to fraud in September and was sentenced to 120 days in jail and ordered to pay $12,000 in restitution. She’s one of several Marshallese birth mothers who have been convicted of fraud for working with more than one lawyer and adoptive family at a time. Some have questioned why the investigations focus only on the birth mothers and not the attorneys and handlers who worked with them despite their prior commitments to other adoptive families.

A short time after the Emos adoption fell through, the Cartwrights were matched yet again with a Marshallese mother.

A week before the birth, Roxane Cartwright told Civil Beat, the birth mother told her there was something wrong with the baby’s brain. Cartwright said she checked with Justin Aine, a handler for Cordes, who dismissed it as a minor problem.

She then tried to check with the birth mother’s doctor, who said he couldn’t discuss it because the birth mother had not signed a release form. The birth mother, in turn, told Cartwright that she had been instructed not to sign the form — she didn’t specify who had told her that or why.

Shortly after the birth mother went into labor and the Cartwrights arrived from North Dakota, “The nurse said, `So you’re adopting this baby? Are you aware of the anomalies?’ I looked at her and said, `Anomalies? What?’”

Two doctors, Cartwright said, took her to a waiting room and explained that the baby girl, Sofia, might have a serious heart defect and a cyst in her brain that could prevent her from ever walking.

“I don’t want this to come out where people think I wish I didn’t have my daughter, because I love my daughter,” Roxane said through tears. “She’s my everything.”

But she blames Cordes for failing to disclose the medical problems.

Civil Beat sent a list of questions to Cordes about his adoption practices, including whether he was aware of Sofia’s medical conditions and whether he asked the birth mother not to sign a consent form allowing the Cartwrights to review medical information.

Cordes declined to respond, saying “It is clear from the limited questions you submitted to me that you and the individuals you have talked to are out to do a hatchet piece using lies, innuendo, and twisted half truths … I will not legitimize your story by any participation in it.”

Sofia’s heart was fine. But when she was 9 months old, she starting tipping over a lot. Tests showed a cyst over much of the back part of her brain. After two brain surgeries, “you’d never know she had any of these issues,” Cartwright said. “She is a walking miracle. No one can explain her.”

Still, Cartwright said, “This will never go away, this is a lifelong condition. I feel that Vaughn should have told us.”

]]>Birth Moms Sometimes Face Adoption Fraud Chargeshttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/birth-moms-sometimes-face-adoption-fraud-charges/
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 10:01:27 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1309478In 15 years, Meryann Lomae went from being an apparent victim in a shady Marshallese adoption to being convicted for committing adoption fraud herself. In 2003, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun found Lomae living with other pregnant Marshallese women at an apartment complex in Red Hill. The women told the reporter that they had […]

Editor's Note

This is article is part of Civil Beat’s investigative series “Black Market Babies.” Click here to read the other stories.

In 15 years, Meryann Lomae went from being an apparent victim in a shady Marshallese adoption to being convicted for committing adoption fraud herself.

In 2003, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun found Lomae living with other pregnant Marshallese women at an apartment complex in Red Hill. The women told the reporter that they had been recruited by a fixer in the Marshalls and given tickets to fly to Honolulu, where they would put up their newborns for adoption, despite a law in the island nation against soliciting.

The reporter did not quote Lomae, just mentioned she was there. But another Marshallese woman who’d been at the same apartment complex told the reporter she had no idea she was relinquishing her child for good and had lost contact with her after the adoption — a typical experience for the birth mothers.

Public records indicate the Lomae moved to Washington state sometime after the 2003 Baltimore Sun stories. In 2010 or so, she moved to Arkansas, home to the biggest Marshallese community in the United States and a hub of Marshallese adoptions.

In 2017, Arkansas attorney Vaughn Cordes contacted police to file a complaint about Lomae. Cordes said one of his facilitators, Justin Aine, had connected him with Lomae so that he could arrange an adoption for her unborn child.

Lomae signed an agreement to have her child adopted by a Kentucky couple, Cordes said, and accepted more than $13,000 for living expenses while she was pregnant.

Cordes and his associates had lost contact with Lomae when Cordes got a call from a worker at a local hospital. The worker also was trying to find the Marshallese woman. She told Cordes that Lomae had given birth a week or so before.

It turned out Lomae had started working with a different attorney who specializes in Marshall Islands adoptions, Paul Petersen. Her child had been adopted by a different family.

Lomae pleaded guilty in September and was sentenced to 120 days in jail. She also must pay $28,521 in restitution.

Lomae is one of several Marshallese women convicted of adoption fraud in Arkansas. Some of those familiar with the prosecutions have questioned whether the birth mothers are being forced to take all the blame while the role of lawyers and recruiters goes unexamined.

Petersen and his paralegal, Megan Wolfe, were listed as prosecution witnesses. But because Lomae pleaded guilty before going to trial, their role in Lomae’s change of attorneys never came out in court.

Matthew Long, an attorney for Petersen, declined to comment on the Lomae case but said in general Petersen’s adoption cases are subject to extensive reviews and he has never been found to be out of compliance with the law.

Kevin Lammers is an Arkansas public defender who represents many Marshallese women in this circumstance. While not commenting specifically on the Lomae case, he said he believes in general that private attorneys and fixers may mislead birth mothers about the terms of their agreements — or what it means to take money from two different lawyers. He thinks in some cases, women are pressured to switch lawyers.

“I have suspicions
about what’s going on,” he said. “But until I can actually bring somebody into court that says that this was misrepresented to them… my hands are tied.”

“These aren’t people who really have the means to be making these payments,” he said. “But I know I can’t have my clients go to a trial where the perception is that this is a business for them in this community and face five to 20 years in Arkansas prison.”

]]>Native American Families Once Faced A Similar Adoption Crisishttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/native-american-families-once-faced-a-similar-adoption-crisis/
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 10:01:11 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1309420Adoptions rattled an entire culture. Children stripped of their cultural identities, alienated from extended birth families. Biological parents not understanding the consequences of adoption or getting a chance to consider alternatives. The risk that an entire way of life was vanishing. Forty years ago, the same perils faced by the Marshall Islands afflicted a population […]

]]>Adoptions rattled an entire culture. Children stripped of their cultural identities, alienated from extended birth families. Biological parents not understanding the consequences of adoption or getting a chance to consider alternatives. The risk that an entire way of life was vanishing.

Editor's Note

This is article is part of Civil Beat’s investigative series “Black Market Babies.” Click here to read the other stories.

Forty years ago, the same perils faced by the Marshall Islands afflicted a population far closer to home — Native Americans. State child welfare workers were forcibly removing children from their families. As many as 35 percent were fostered or adopted by families with no connection to their culture.

In the Marshall Islands, babies are not being taken away by government agencies. Instead, private lawyers arrange black market placements with U.S. families in exchange for birth mothers’ plane fare and living expenses.

But with both groups, critics have questioned whether birth parents are truly consenting to the adoptions and whether they understand that the child will be gone forever.

In the case of Native Americans, Congress passed a law, the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, to try to address some of the problems. The ICWA promotes the placement of Native American children within the community and mandates that families get intensive services to prevent abuse and neglect and keep children in their homes, according to the National Indian Child Welfare Association.

The law also tried to assure that when parents consent to give up a child, the decision is truly voluntary, said Connie Hickman Tanner of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

One provision, for instance, assures that efforts have been made to keep the family together — or at least keep the child within the tribe — before resorting to a foster placement or adoption. Another requires birth parents to give their consent in writing to a judge, and for the judge to certify that the consequences were fully explained in English or interpreted into a language the parents understood.

Consents cannot be given within 10 days of the birth. And the parents can withdraw consent at any time before a judge issues a final decree. The law even allows parents who allege fraud or coercion within two years of the adoption to ask a judge to return the child.

Marshallese parents who do private adoptions, by contrast, are subject to the laws of the state where the adoption takes place. Most state laws are not nearly as protective.

“This is the kind of thing you’d want for this population,” Tanner said.

Now the ICWA is under siege. In October, a federal judge in Texas declared the ICWA unconstitutional, alleging it discriminates against couples who are not Native American trying to adopt Native children. It’s uncertain whether that decision will be upheld on appeal, or whether judges in other districts might reach the same conclusion.

]]>Marshallese Adoptions Fuel A Lucrative Practice For Some Lawyershttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/marshallese-adoptions-fuel-a-lucrative-practice-for-some-lawyers/
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 10:01:11 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=13099582017, an Arizona attorney named Paul Petersen bought a four-bedroom split-level house in a suburb of Salt Lake City and started using it as a hub for black market adoptions. Petersen arranges for the plane tickets for pregnant women traveling some 5,000 miles from the Republic of the Marshall Islands to give up their children […]

]]>In 2017, an Arizona attorney named Paul Petersen bought a four-bedroom split-level house in a suburb of Salt Lake City and started using it as a hub for black market adoptions.

Editor's Note

This is Part 2 of Civil Beat’s investigative series “Black Market Babies.” Click here to read the introduction and Part 1.

Petersen arranges for the plane tickets for pregnant women traveling some 5,000 miles from the Republic of the Marshall Islands to give up their children for adoption. He covers their expenses while they live in his house in West Valley City.

At any one time, 10 or more pregnant women live in the house, one of the residents told a Civil Beat reporter who visited recently.

A treaty known as the Compact of Free Association bars Marshallese women intending to place a child for adoption from traveling to the U.S. without special permission. To control unregulated black market adoptions — which were rampant in the 1990s — the remote Pacific nation created a government agency to oversee international placements of children.

The treaty provision and the new law were put in place in the early 2000s to stop the exploitation of pregnant women who had little understanding of the consequences of adoption in the U.S. – that there would be no guarantee of continued contact with an adopted child, for instance, or expectation that a child would return at the age of 18.

A split-level house in West Valley City, Utah, owned by attorney Paul Petersen, where pregnant Marshallese women stay before adopting out their children

Emily Dugdale/Civil Beat

Both the U.S. State Department and the Central Adoption Authority in the Marshall Islands confirmed to Civil Beat that pregnant women are not permitted to travel to the United States without visas if they intend to give up a child for adoption, even if they are going for some other purpose, such as a job or school.

Yet 20 years later, Petersen and a small number of other private adoption attorneys openly fly Marshallese women to the U.S. who plan to adopt out their children. They cover expenses such as airfare and room-and-board and match them with adoptive families, opening the door to the very abuses the law and treaty were designed to halt.

Paul Petersen is the elected assessor in Maricopa County, Arizona, which covers the Phoenix metro area. He is one of the most active adoption lawyers handling babies from the Marshall Islands. (2013 photo)

Maricopa County Assessor's Office

The lawyers, who get thousands of dollars per adoption, are undermining the official process and its safeguards. All along the way, authorities from immigration agents at the airport in the Marshallese capital in Majuro to family court judges in far-flung U.S. states fail to stop the flow of babies.

“I often think of international adoptions as water,”
said Jini Roby, an attorney and professor of social work at Brigham Young University who advised the Marshall Islands on its adoption law and treaty. “Water goes to lower ground. And so it’s seeking lower ground, everywhere there are fewer barriers.”

Petersen declined to be interviewed for this story. His attorney, Matthew Long, noted that Petersen’s adoptions and actions as a lawyer are subject to oversight by many regulatory agencies, state bar associations and courts.

“Those regulatory agencies have found no issues and the adoptions that have been completed are all done with the approval of the courts,” Long said. “Mr. Petersen has complied with the law.”

Long would not directly address whether Petersen is arranging for the travel of pregnant women from the Marshall Islands and, if so, how he believes that complies with the international treaty.

“You’re not denying that Mr. Petersen arranges for women to fly over from the Marshall Islands,” a reporter noted.

“I did not make a statement one way or the other,” Long replied. “I said laws have been complied with.”

Journal Notebook

“People have figured out how to make this happen in different locations. And just the tension, doesn’t mean it’s going to stop.” — Julie Walsh, associate faculty specialist, University of Hawaii Manoa

The Marshallese agency
in charge of overseeing international placements, the Central Adoption Authority, says the law and treaty clearly prohibits Marshallese women from traveling to the U.S. for an adoption.

“It’s very illegal,” said Claudia Lokeijak, director of the central authority.

That’s true whether a Marshallese woman travels while pregnant or after the baby is born. Nor does it matter if the birth mother plans to stay in the U.S. after the adoption, Lokeijak said, contrary to what some of the lawyers argue.

The U.S. State Department, in charge of enforcing the compact, also says the law does not leave room for interpretation.

Mothers planning to give up their children in adoptions would need a special visa “regardless of whether they also intend to travel to the United States for additional, other purposes,” a state department spokeswoman wrote in an email. Most Marshallese citizens can travel to the U.S. without any visa at all.

A Long History In The Marshall Islands

The 43-year-old Petersen appears to be one of the most active Marshallese adoption lawyers.

He is also the elected county assessor in Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes the Phoenix metro area and its approximately 4.1 million residents. He was working as a spokesman for the office when the previous assessor resigned and suggested he apply to be appointed to the job. He has since been elected twice.

By statute, the assessor job pays $76,000 a year.

Early on, he took some heat from county leaders for driving to his public servant job in an Audi. So he switched to a white Jaguar.

“I was told to get a new car, so I did, and now I’m getting flak for that, too. I guess I can’t win,” Petersen told the Arizona Republic in 2013.

Arizona attorney Paul Petersen

maricopa.gov

Petersen is not required to disclose how much he makes from his adoption practice. According to public records, Petersen and his wife, a real estate agent, own a house in Mesa, another in the mountain resort town of Pinetop east of Phoenix, a four-plex and condo in Mesa and the house in Utah where Marshallese birth mothers stay. In total, in cash and mortgages, he has paid about $1.6 million for these properties, public records show.

Asked how Petersen is able to pursue his adoption practice in addition to his full-time job as county assessor, Long replied, “Hard work.”

Several of Petersen’s relatives have been career politicians, including his father, David, who was Arizona’s elected state treasurer.

Paul Petersen’s adoption work was the focus of an Arizona Republic article in 1998. Petersen started facilitating adoptions as a college student. At left is Matt Long, who is now Petersen’s attorney.

newspapers.com

As a young Mormon, he did his mission work in the Marshall Islands and learned to speak the language. He also made lasting contacts in the islands. While he was still in college, an international adoption agency recruited him to travel to the islands to arrange adoptions because he was fluent in Marshallese, according to news accounts.

“The only area of law that I’ve ever seen where everyone is happy with the end result is adoptions … that’s why primarily I’ve gravitated to it because the end result is good for everybody, and I like being part of that process,” he told the Phoenix Business Journal in 2013.

Many of the parents who adopt Marshallese children through Petersen also are Mormon and refer friends and relatives to him.

Attorney Paul Petersen, based in Mesa, Arizona, has an active adoption practice in Arizona, Arkansas and Utah. This is the homepage of his adoption website.

Screenshot: privateadoptionlaw.com

Candis Schow in Idaho is one who learned about Petersen from messaging other Mormon couples she’d met years earlier, asking them how they were adopting.

“Around here, he is the only name I’ve heard when it comes to Marshallese adoptions,” Schow told Civil Beat in a Facebook message. She ended up not hiring Petersen because of the estimated $35,000 cost.

At one time, Petersen focused on adoptions in Arkansas, where he has a law license, but recently is operating more intensively in Utah, where he passed the bar exam this year.

In June, a Civil Beat reporter visited the house in Utah Petersen bought in 2017 and uses for lodging Marshallese birth mothers. A toddler splashed in a water spigot, cooling off in Utah’s intense summer heat. Music drifted from a large outdoor speaker system on a covered porch, where a young man sat quietly, smoking.

Several young women sat on folding chairs in loose, colorful dresses popular in the Marshall Islands, their long, black hair arranged in buns. Some scrolled on their phones, their hands resting on growing stomachs.

In June, this house in West Valley City, Utah, was home to several pregnant Marshallese women.

Emily Dugdale/Civil Beat

One of the women, Marje Anjain, said she had been to Utah a year before for an adoption through Petersen. She said she got in touch with Petersen through Jauwe Simon, a relative, who also happens to be a facilitator for the attorney and supervises the women at the house.

A man named Reggie, who identified himself as Simon’s boyfriend, said Petersen covers the women’s airfare and living expenses, and that Simon sometimes flies with them from Majuro to the U.S.

Someone at the house apparently got in touch with Simon, who was in Hawaii at the time. Simon called her boyfriend and said on speakerphone that no one should talk to the Civil Beat reporter or the interpreter who accompanied her.

One young woman, holding Simon’s 3-month-old baby, declined to talk, saying “Jauwe told us not to say anything.”

Others headed inside and locked the door. They crowded at the kitchen window, peering out through the screen door.

Enticing Pregnant Women To Give Up Their Babies

Marshall Islands law also prohibits so-called fixers — facilitators who work for the attorneys — from approaching pregnant women to entice them with money in return for giving up a child for adoption.

But Marshallese women tell of being coaxed into adoptions by people associated with lawyers or their fixers.

Kookie Gideon says when she got pregnant in high school, she was approached by a relative of Maki Takehisa, then a facilitator for lawyer Paul Petersen. Gideon said she didn’t want to give up the baby but was convinced by Takehisa’s relative, whose name she can’t remember, that the baby would return to her at the age of 18.

“She came to my house and she kind of begged me because at first I didn’t want to,” Gideon said through a translator.

She said that Takehisa gave her a plane ticket to the U.S., and that she and three other girls flew with Takehisa’s husband. In Springdale, Arkansas, Takehisa picked them up at the airport.

Takehisa declined to talk to Civil Beat. Long, Petersen’s attorney, said he would not address “uncorroborated” accounts of birth mothers who worked with Petersen.

Charles Kaijo/Civil Beat

"I can’t have my clients go to a trial where the perception is that this is a business for them."

In one rare case of birth mother solicitation becoming public, an Arizona judge in 2007 noted that a go-between in a Petersen adoption was paid $2,000 “for her role in placing the child,” which he called a violation of state law. The judge didn’t mention it, but it also appeared to violate Marshall Islands law.

The judge blocked the adoption, finding that “Petersen had violated RMI laws regulating adoptions” as well as the Compact of Free Association. The adoption would only go through, he said, if it was approved by the CAA or the adoption agency it designated.

A three-judge appellate court reversed the decision and remanded it to the lower court judge. It found that the judge had improperly delegated his responsibility to determine if the adoption was in the best interests of the child to the CAA-approved adoption agency.

The appeals court did not base its ruling on whether the adoption had violated the compact, but in a footnote, wrote there was more support for the lower court judge’s conclusion that it did breach the treaty than Petersen’s argument that it had not. The appeals court did not address the issue of the solicitation payment.

Long, Petersen’s attorney, characterized the appeals court decision as an affirmation that Petersen complied with the law. If the judges had been concerned about Petersen’s actions, Long said, they would have been obligated to refer them to the state bar association. “That didn’t happen,” he said.

Journal Notebook

“How can we stop them from adopting illegally? … Sometimes when I think about it I cannot sleep, because of course it has frustrated me.” — Daisy Alik-Momotaro, senator in the Marshallese parliament.

These lawyers typically hire handlers to house and monitor the women when they arrive in the U.S., and to translate adoption documents such as consent forms. Birth mothers have accused some handlers of controlling their movements and threatening them when they didn’t cooperate, or even, in at least one case, skimming money from their living expenses.

One birth mother, Rebecca Kaious, told Civil Beat she was intimidated into staying in an isolated house in Arkansas by Lynwood Jennet, a fixer for attorney Petersen. Jennet’s husband told them not to leave the house and forbade visitors.

“When we tried to leave, he told us to get back in,” Kaious said through a translator.

With little to eat and feeling cut off, Kaious and two friends finally fled, only to be pursued by Jennet, who threatened to call the police and force them to reimburse their airfare — an astronomical sum for many Marshallese. Jennet could not be reached for comment.

Charles Kaijo/Civil Beat

Listen Kevin Lammers, a deputy public defender in Benton County, Arkansas.

In Arkansas, prosecutors have gone after several Marshallese birth mothers for fraud for abandoning one adoption lawyer and the family lined up to take the child and then working with a different lawyer and family instead. The women benefited by getting living expenses twice for the same baby.

Yet the role of the lawyers in these cases has never led to charges or sanctions or received the same scrutiny in court as the actions of the mothers. Did they know that the birth mother had already committed to a different lawyer? Did they entice her to leave?

“There’s a lot of people to blame,
and all the blame is falling on the birth mothers,” said Kevin Lammers, a deputy public defender in Benton County, Arkansas, who has represented some of the mothers.

Several people told Civil Beat that the FBI and state authorities are looking into the activities of some of the adoption lawyers. But no charges have been filed.

Long said that Petersen has not been approached by investigators.

Legal Concerns

Vaughn Cordes handles adoptions in Arkansas, home of the biggest Marshallese community in the U.S. He has a crib in his law office, which he says is for clients, and a few Marshallese handicrafts on the walls and on the reception desk.

In an interview last spring,
Cordes said he got into the business after adopting a Marshallese child himself and realizing birth mothers needed an advocate who could do the adoptions according to their cultural norms, as much as possible under U.S. law.

Cordes said he works with Marshallese women who have been living in Arkansas for years, making the adoptions indisputably legal, rather than arranging for women to fly from the islands, as he said other lawyers do.

He has worked closely
with Justin Aine, a facilitator who in January was prevented from flying out of the Majuro airport with two women who intended to give up their children for adoption in Arkansas. Cordes calls Aine an “independent contractor” and “my primary interpreter since 2013.”

But Cordes said “I do not have him go there and recruit. That’s not our policy.” Aine may work with other lawyers, he added.

Cordes said he does
sometimes work with women just arrived from the Marshalls, but only when they’ve been flown in by other lawyers and “dumped off” in poor living conditions, prompting their relatives in Arkansas to ask him for help.

Related Story

Adoption records are generally closed, but Civil Beat found one case in which Aine helped connect Cordes clients with a birth mother who was still in the Marshall Islands, showing how the roles of fixers and attorneys can be hard to untangle.

The case involved Elizabeth and Joseph Meyer of Kentucky. Cordes had lined up an adoption for the couple in 2016, but it fell through when the birth mother was offered more money by a competing attorney, Elizabeth Meyer said in an interview.

Then Aine, who knew about the failed adoption, connected the Meyers with a pregnant 17-year-old in Majuro, and they began communicating via Skype.

The birth mother’s friends apparently covered her airfare. Cordes handled the adoption, Elizabeth Meyer said, but with one condition he believed made it legal.

“He made it clear he wouldn’t be involved unless she got here on her own,” she said.

Courtesy of Roxane Cartwright

"The nurse said, 'So you’re adopting this baby? Are you aware of the anomalies?'I looked at her and said, 'Anomalies? What?'"

Cordes also handled the adoption of Rebecca Kaious, the woman who fled, with the help of Aine, from the house associated with competing attorney Petersen. But he had to deal with a complication: Kaious had not been in Arkansas for the required four months to allow the baby to be adopted to an out-of-state family.

So he temporarily adopted the child himself, according to Deanna Franklin, the Kentucky woman who later readopted the boy.

Well-known fixer Justin Aine, in the green shirt, was photographed at the Majuro airport on the day he was stopped by officials from escorting pregnant women to the U.S.

Franklin said Cordes told her that his wife, pregnant herself at the time, could not tolerate a newborn in the house. And so, she said, Cordes moved into his law office with the infant for six weeks or so until the Franklins were able to take the child.

Birth mother Kaious, back in the Marshall Islands, had been trying for months to reach Cordes, Franklin said. She only found out what happened to her son when Franklin, who wanted an open adoption and was concerned Kaious hadn’t been told, contacted her in the Marshall Islands.

“I was mad,” Kaious said through a translator. “And sad. I don’t understand why.”

Earlier this year, Cordes spoke to Civil Beat in an hour-long interview for the Offshore podcast series entitled “The Blood Calls,” which also explored Marshallese adoptions.

But he declined to talk to reporters for this report. Cordes was sent a list of questions earlier this month about the Franklin case and other matters. He emailed back that they showed that “you and the individuals you have talked to are out to do a hatchet piece using lies, innuendo, and twisted half truths.”

Anatomy Of An Adoption

Hawaii attorney Laurie Loomis is another who specializes in Marshallese adoptions. She flies Marshallese women to Oahu, where they have been housed in Waikiki hotels and, until recently, an apartment in Aiea. She works with a fixer, Merlyna Chinglong, who takes the women to medical appointments and looks after their needs.

Loomis did not answer questions from Civil Beat despite numerous efforts to reach her, including detailed messages with a rundown of questions left with her office staff. Chinglong could not be reached for comment.

But Civil Beat obtained correspondence and legal contracts showing how one of Loomis’s adoptions unfolded. The documents reveal Loomis and another attorney, Gordon Benjamin, working together to justify it in the face of objections from officials in the Marshall Islands and Hawaii.

Workers at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children raised alarms when they noticed pregnant Marshallese women arriving as a group with a minder for medical appointments

April Estrellon/Civil Beat

The case involved a girl, Leyann, born to Hemiko Binejal in Majuro in June 2014. Eight days later, Binejal flew with Leyann to Hawaii with a ticket paid for by Loomis, who lined up an adoption for the baby.

But there was a problem: attorney Benjamin, who has lived most of his adult life in the Marshalls and has many connections to government officials, had been talking to the CAA about whether this adoption could be considered legal. It was not going smoothly.

“He has encountered some push back from the administrator of the Central Adoption Authority,” Loomis wrote to the adoptive couple.

The couple backed out. Binejal, the birth mother, left Hawaii to live with relatives in Arkansas, leaving Leyann in Honolulu. She granted Loomis, who claimed to be representing her in the failed adoption, the legal authority to arrange a new placement. Leyann, meanwhile, was cared for by a woman in Kaneohe lined up by Loomis.

To help clear up any legal questions, Loomis prepared an affidavit for Binejal to sign declaring that she did not travel to the U.S. for the purposes of adoption, clearly prohibited by the treaty and Marshall Islands law.

2014 letter from attorney Laurie Loomis to Michael and Missy Swenson explaining that the adoption of a child born in the Marshall Islands would be handled as if it were domestic

“My motive in moving here is to live in the United States with my family in order to achieve a better life,” according to Binejal’s affidavit.

The two lawyers then offered the child to another couple, Missy and Mike Swenson of Washington state.

Benjamin had first connected with the Swensons several months earlier. They had been trying to adopt through the Minnesota agency that, at the time, was the only one authorized by the Marshall Islands to do international adoptions. But the Swensons were told the wait would likely be years.

Benjamin was the attorney for the Minnesota agency, with a long record of doing officially sanctioned Marshallese adoptions. But now he contacted the Swensons with a surprising offer.

Adoption Standards

At the heart of the adoption reforms in the Marshall Islands was a cardinal principle, spelled out by the Hague Convention, an international agreement that sets standards for intercountry adoptions.

“Independent adoptions undermine the system of safeguards put in place by the convention,” according to a guide to good practice published in 2008. “How the prospective adoptive parents find a child, who arranges the adoptions, what the costs are — this information may not be known to authorities in either country, as there is no supervision.”

Benjamin said he wanted to “pilot” a new method of doing an adoption of a Marshallese baby whose family had established itself in the U.S. before the pregnancy, Missy Swenson told Civil Beat. It would not be subject to the treaty or Marshallese law, but he would use the same safeguards.

The Swensons were game. But a few months later, with no match made for the Swensons and the Binejal adoption was falling through, Benjamin wrote an email to Missy Swenson to propose something altogether different.

“There is also the possibility of a family who plans to leave the Marshall Islands to move to the U.S.,” Benjamin wrote. “I have to make sure that they are not moving only for adoption. I am working with the CAA to see how flexible they can be on this.”

Journal Notebook

“People just become very myopic and just think that they’ve just got to get that one child, one baby. But if we keep acting like that then we’re going to destroy the whole adoption system. And there are kids who need it.” — Jini Roby, attorney and professor of social work at Brigham Young University.

Benjamin was floating the idea that an adoption would not have to be done through official channels if the family was coming to the U.S. for some other reason as well, such as a job or school or just starting a new life.

After Benjamin and Loomis offered Leyann to the Swensons, Loomis wrote them to say that Benjamin had confirmed that the CAA had agreed that the adoption could be handled as domestic — that is, the Marshall Islands government would not have to be involved. The CAA’s Lokeijak told Civil Beat the agency would never have approved a child born in the Marshalls being flown to the U.S. for adoption.

Loomis wrote the Swensons that the adoption could be handled through a compact between U.S. states governing domestic adoptions in which the birth parents and adoptive parents live in different states.

But here again, they encountered resistance. “The Hawaii administrator (of the interstate compact) has raised the issue of the nature of this adoption,” Loomis wrote the Swensons. “Mr. Benjamin’s opinion letter should solve this problem. If not, he will help us obtain a letter from the CAA.”

Meanwhile, Loomis had the Swensons sign a retainer for “legal representation.” Loomis, in other words, was no longer representing the birth mother, but the adoptive parents.

Missy Swenson said she backed out of the adoption because of ethical red flags and ballooning costs. Among other things, Swenson said Denise Mazepa, the Kaneohe woman Loomis commissioned to take care of the baby said she’d been feeding her oatmeal because formula was too expensive. As a result, the 9-week-old girl was wearing clothes more suitable for a 5-month-old, Swenson said. Mazepa told Civil Beat she had no recollection of the child.

Loomis, meanwhile, increased her estimate for the adoption by several thousand dollars to $53,442. The estimate included $20,000 for Loomis’ legal fee, $6,500 for fixer Chinglong and $5,100 for Mazepa, who would be paid for looking after the child for 68 days at $75 a day, and get another $400 for diapers, formula and clothing. Mazepa told Civil Beat she was not paid by Loomis.

“We found out quickly, this child was being used, a pawn,” Swenson said. “She was being sold by Laurie.”

Swenson worries about what happened to the child. She wonders if someone else adopted her.

Benjamin, in an interview with Civil Beat, said that he considered the Binejal adoption “iffy” because the child was born in the Marshall Islands, which is why he discussed it with the Central Adoption Authority. He said he doesn’t remember the details of the agency’s response.

“I never ever have done anything like that,” he said of the Binejal adoption. “Laurie asked for assistance … So I said to her, ‘Normally when a baby is born in Majuro, we do all the adoptions there’ … She said, `Oh, a lot of it is happening. Those recruiters are going there, they’re getting girls that already had babies and pulling them over to the U.S.’”

‘You Cannot Stop Adoption’

Perhaps more than anyone else, Gordon Benjamin has been in the middle of the debate over Marshallese adoptions.

He said he helped write the treaty governing adoptions and worked as a lawyer for official Marshallese-approved agencies. He even traveled to Arkansas as part of a Marshallese government delegation investigating the abuses, before starting to do black market adoptions himself.

Now 62, he said he first moved to the Marshalls when he was 31.

He worked as the city manager of one of the nation’s atolls, and served as the head of a division of trade and industry. In 2017, he registered as a foreign agent to provide lobbying and legal services in the U.S. for a local government council including three of the atolls, which agreed to pay him $250,000 a year.

Benjamin, who holds Marshall Islands and Maryland law licenses, said he started doing adoptions for the agencies designated by the CAA in 2007. At one point, the agency he worked for was doing as many as 24 adoptions a year, he said, but over time, it dropped to only three or four.

“We found out it’s all because of recruiters coming to Majuro” and enticing women into private adoptions, he said.

In 2013, along with the CAA’s Claudia Lokeijak and the nation’s secretary of internal affairs, he said he traveled to Arkansas to investigate the problem. They organized a meeting with the lawyers doing the clandestine adoptions, he said.

No one showed.

Jessica Terrell/Civil Beat

Listen Eldon Alik, the consul general in Springdale, Arkansas, thinks that state laws may need to be amended to help protect Marshallese birth families.

Benjamin said he was appalled by what was happening to Marshallese women in private adoptions.

“They do not understand they’re closed adoptions, they don’t understand they may never see their child again,” he said. “I’ve seen how they recruit, I’ve seen how they make them live.”

A birth mother “is living in this house in Arkansas,” he said. “She’s not allowed out because of a Marshallese madame, almost — I’m not saying she’s prostituting the girls out, but she’s like the police girl. She won’t let them out of the house.”

Around the time of the Binejal adoption in 2014, he started floating the idea that he could do private adoptions in the U.S. the “correct way,” making sure that the women knew what they were doing and were prepared to cope with life in America.

But Lokeijak wasn’t buying it, he said. “Claudia says she couldn’t in her mind figure out how that was still OK, because she wanted every adoption to be run through the CAA.”

Benjamin went ahead anyway. He had an argument for why it was legal — and ethical.

He decided he would only work with women who were coming to the U.S. with relatives, who could help them get by after the birth. In most cases, he expected them to pay their own way from Majuro to Hilo, where he owns property, he said.

The Hawaii Island church where Maize Luke, who helps orient new arrivals from the Marshall Islands, serves as a pastor.

Emily Dugdale/Civil Beat

“I began helping them because these were families I had known from the Marshalls, and they personally trusted me and wanted me to help them,” he said.

Benjamin lined up an assistant, Pastor Maize Luke in Hilo, to orient the new arrivals and cover their living expenses.

But Luke’s role was even bigger than that. He would “train” the newcomers on how to get by in the U.S. — everything from getting a Social Security card to buying a car.

In an interview with Civil Beat, Luke said Benjamin lets him know when to pick up the pregnant women and their relatives at the Hilo airport. Luke gets them settled and covers their living expenses, reimbursed by Benjamin. Sometimes, after the women give birth, the pastor helps them find jobs.

Luke told Civil Beat that when Benjamin first approached him in 2016, he was reluctant because of the sketchy reputation of Marshallese adoptions.

But he ultimately decided Benjamin was doing it the right way.

“You cannot stop adoption,” he said. “So we will try to help them. We cannot fight it, because they keep coming.”

Charles Kaijo/Civil Beat

"I'd rather take a different approach."

— Melissa Laelan, court translater and leader of a community nonprofit in Arkansas.

But Luke says he didn’t know that it was illegal for Marshallese women to come to the U.S. for the purpose of giving up their babies for adoption.

Benjamin said it was only after the pregnant woman had her baby and decided to give it up in an adoption that he would get involved.

He said he doesn’t ask the families to reimburse living expenses if they decide against adoption — which he said has happened in two or three of the 16 or so private adoptions he said he has done since 2015.

He says he makes no money from it and that the families he’s helped are all doing well.

Though he acknowledges open adoptions cannot be legally enforced in most places, he says he works with all the parties to make sure they maintain contact.

A ‘Big Money Business’

The behavior of the lawyers is all the more surprising because in 2011, an adoption agent in Utah was convicted of engaging in many of the same practices.

Teresa Snow pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of aiding and abetting the improper entry of an alien. Snow ran an agency, Legacy International Adoptions, that focused on the adoption of Marshallese children.

The plea agreement cited the case of one Marshallese woman who traveled to the U.S. in 2006 to give up a child for adoption. Snow paid the woman’s airfare, provided housing and took her to medical appointments – the same practices some of the private lawyers identified by Civil Beat engage in today.

Snow got five years’ probation and was required to try to open up communication between adoptive parents with Marshallese children and their birth parents.

Brett Parkinson, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Snow, said one problem with the law is proving intent. Marshallese women traveling to the U.S. could say they were coming for vacation or a reunion, and found out when they were here that they were pregnant and decided not to go home.

Teresa Snow’s statement in advance of her plea agreement in 2011

But “there are plenty of ways to demonstrate intent,” said Parkinson, now in private practice in California – including several pregnant women living in one house and other indicators of an organized “adoption mill.”

Money — for the attorneys, fixers, birth mothers and others — provides the fuel that keeps the black market going strong, more than two decades after the abuses were first identified.

While the amount paid to the lawyers is generally not made public, documents shared with Civil Beat indicate the fees for a single adoption can add up to as much as $20,000. The attorneys may have other methods, too, for increasing their payoffs, such as Paul Petersen charging adoptive families rent for the birth mothers staying at his Utah house.

Judge Doug Martin spoke with Civil Beat in his office at the Washington County Courthouse in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Martin points out that continuing to be able to finalize adoptions in Arkansas was enough of an incentive for Petersen to take the bar exam there — two decades after he took the test in Arizona. And he sees no sign that attorneys will get out of the Marshallese adoption business, despite apparent outrage over their practices.

Martin says he’s warned a local adoption attorney in Arkansas more than once: “You know, you’re going to wind up in jail over this one of these days.”

The attorney, he says, tells him, “I know, I know. But I’m doing the Lord’s work.”

“I think that some folks have gotten addicted,” Martin says. “I think it’s a lot of money and they can’t leave it now.”

]]>Why A Crackdown On This Growing Adoption Pipeline Just Hasn’t Workedhttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/why-a-crackdown-on-this-growing-adoption-pipeline-just-hasnt-worked-2/
Tue, 27 Nov 2018 10:01:17 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1309484Gideon was nine months pregnant when she flew to Honolulu in 2015, and handed her newly printed Marshallese passport to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent for inspection. Gideon had been anxious the entire five-hour flight from Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands. It was her first time traveling outside of her country. […]

]]>Kookie Gideon was nine months pregnant when she flew to Honolulu in 2015, and handed her newly printed Marshallese passport to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent for inspection.

Gideon had been anxious the entire five-hour flight from Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands. It was her first time traveling outside of her country. She spoke no English.

“I was nervous that I would give birth on the flight,” she said.

And — though she says she didn’t know it at the time — she was embarking on an illegal journey to place her unborn child with an American family.

Kookie Gideon says she didn’t realize traveling to the U.S. to give up a baby for adoption was illegal. She is one of dozens of Marshallese women who make the trip every year and hand over their newborns to American adoptive parents.

Sarah Holm/Civil Beat

Gideon, 21 at the time, was traveling to Arkansas as part of an illicit and booming adoption pipeline. Two other pregnant women were making this journey with her.

Citizens of the Marshall Islands can travel and live freely in the United States. But because of the troubling history of unethical adoptions in the island nation, women are prohibited from traveling to the U.S. to adopt out their children.

Airport immigration agents could have stopped the three women — or the man escorting them. But they didn’t.

Instead, Gideon passed easily through the checkpoint and made her way to Arkansas, where just a few weeks later she handed her newborn child to an American couple in a secluded, rural field — without ever speaking to a lawyer, a judge, or a social worker.

“I thought that everything was going to be OK,” Gideon said. “But it wasn’t until way later that I realized … I should have gone to court.”

Gideon once believed her child was guaranteed to come back to her at age 18. Now, she fears she didn’t understand the truth.

Jessica Terrell/Civil Beat

"It was not for somebody to take them away and you would never get to know them again. It's to get us closer as family. That's why it's not really the word adoption."

More than three decades ago, for reasons no one can fully explain, the Marshall Islands became a fertile source for U.S. adoptions, a pipeline that came to be known as a black market for babies. The adoptions took on an ugly hue amid growing evidence that Marshallese birth parents did not understand what it meant to give up a child for adoption in the U.S. Many birth parents believed that their children would come home when they turned 18.

The frenzied baby trade
led to a series of reforms aimed at curbing the corrupting influence of money, and making sure Marshallese parents truly consented.

The Marshallese government made it illegal for adoption fixers to offer cash for babies. It banned private adoptions in favor of a process controlled by a central authority. A treaty between the two nations, the Compact of Free Association, was amended to bar visa-free travel from the Marshall Islands to the U.S. “for the purpose of adoption.”

Journal Notebook

“In our culture, your mother will always be your mother. No matter who adopts you, your mother will always be your mother. And you will always come back one day.” — Alson Kelen, former mayor of Bikini, Republic of the Marshall Islands.

But almost two decades later, the system of reforms set up by the Marshall Islands has fallen apart, supplanted by an illicit adoption market much like the one it was supposed to stop.

A Civil Beat investigation found that Marshallese women can travel to the U.S. intending to give up their children for adoption with almost no potential for being turned back or even questioned. American adoption attorneys and Marshallese facilitators fuel the pipeline by buying the women plane tickets to the U.S. and providing them a place to stay, food and other necessities while they wait to give birth.

At many steps along the way, officials and others who come into contact with pregnant women fail to stop or even call attention to unlawful adoptions.

Immigration officials, social workers, judges and others who could ask for details as women undertake this journey wave them through. Adoptive parents turn a blind eye to suspicious practices and fervent warnings posted online, lured by the promise of a quick match and a healthy baby.

Doug Martin, a judge in Washington County, Arkansas — home to one of the largest Marshallese populations in the U.S. — says that as many as nine out of 10 adoptions in his area involve Marshallese children. It’s clear to him that many Marshallese women aren’t being told the truth about what they’re about to do.

“The look on their face is always surprise.”

The Airport

The only international airport in the Marshall Islands has a single runway, an open-air waiting area and a few handicraft and snack kiosks.

Marshallese immigration officials can intervene if they see something suspicious – large groups of pregnant women traveling with a minder, for instance. But despite the constant procession of women traveling to place children for adoption, only one such party has ever been stopped, according to local news reports.

In late January, Justin Aine, a well-known fixer for adoption attorneys, arrived at the Majuro airport with two Marshallese women. One was pregnant. The other traveled with a small infant.

April Estrellon/Civil Beat

Listen The United States used the Marshall Islands as atomic testing grounds in the 1940s and ‘50s. Today, Marshallese citizens can work and travel freely in the U.S. under a treaty between the two nations.

They sat waiting on the wooden benches outside while Aine brought their passports and tickets to the agent.

Before the flight boarded, Aine and the women were escorted outside the terminal by Marshallese immigration authorities. Someone had recognized Aine and tipped them off.

The women later told authorities that they were headed to Arkansas to put their children up for adoption. Aine told Civil Beat that he was good friends with one of the women’s mothers, and that he was just doing a favor for her family.

The women weren’t allowed to go to the U.S., and Marshallese officials say they are cooperating with a government investigation.

But it hasn’t slowed the adoption pipeline. Aine boarded a flight back to the U.S. a few days later. He is still known in the Marshallese community for soliciting birth mothers for private adoption lawyers.

April Estrellonl/Civil Beat

Listen Amata Kabua International Airport in the Marshall Islands is the starting point for women traveling to the U.S. for adoptions. “It is a serious issue for us,” says Jonathan Kawakami, a deputy attorney general in the Marshall Islands.

Aine argues
that he was unfairly singled out for what he says is a regular practice on the part of other adoption fixers.

“You know how many girls they recruit to Utah?” he said a few months after the incident. He railed about another adoption fixer whose name he said he couldn’t remember.

“They don’t go after her,” he said.

Journal Notebook

I was just sad for the child, that’s all. Because it was really sad to hear the child cry. The Americans were really happy. This was their first child. They never had a child of their own. — Emy Lejjena, Marshallese birth mother

When pregnant women arrive in the U.S., agents of U.S. Customs and Border Protection can ask about the purpose of their travel and take further steps if they sense anything suspicious.

But U.S. customs agents face an almost impossible task, absent a tip, in identifying Marshallese birth mothers who may be violating the treaty, spokesman Frank Falcon said.

“Any traveler, we may not know they’re pregnant by looking at them,” he said. “It would be inappropriate to ask every passenger, ‘Are you pregnant? Are you coming to give up your child for adoption?’”

The challenge is compounded by the language of the treaty. Customs agents are unable to act, even if they suspect something, without the women admitting their intent. It’s not illegal to travel to the U.S. while pregnant, only for the purpose of adoption.

“Suppose she’s coming to visit a friend and going back,” Falcon said. “Would we deny them entry just because they’re pregnant? Of course not.”

The Hospital

The next chance for intervention lies with the medical professionals who care for Marshallese women during their pregnancies. Hospital workers in Arkansas, Utah and Hawaii have raised questions after seeing a constant parade of Marshallese birth mothers placing their babies for adoption. But it’s easy for adoption lawyers and their fixers to simply change hospitals or take other steps to avoid detection.

In May 2017, doctors at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu sought advice from a coalition of Micronesian community groups after noticing a sudden upsurge in Marshallese patients giving up their children for adoption.

At a meeting, doctors estimated that about 20 pregnant Marshallese women had been brought to the hospital over the previous six months. Many of the women listed the same Aiea address on their intake forms, and were working with Honolulu attorney Laurie Loomis.

One woman, Merlyna Chinglong, brought all the birth mothers for prenatal care. Doctors weren’t sure if their communication with the mothers — who spoke no English — was being translated correctly.

What most concerned doctors was that the women were coming in their last trimester of pregnancy with no prior prenatal care. The women said they planned to take the babies home. But hospital workers saw them hand over the babies to adoptive parents in the parking lot.

Loomis did not answer questions from Civil Beat. Chinglong could not be reached for comment.

Hospitals, of course, have no power to enforce the provisions of international law, except to alert those who could. But they usually don’t.

Part of the challenge is that health care privacy laws are strict, doctors said at the meeting.

And they don’t want to scare away the women from seeking medical treatment. Instead, they want to focus on making sure the women are truly consenting.

After doctors at Kapiolani alerted the public, the number of Marshallese women who appeared to be doing adoptions dropped. Have they stopped coming? Or are they simply going to a different hospital or taking other measures to avoid calling attention to themselves? No one knows.

Emily Dugdale/Civil Beat

ListenJimon Elbi flew to the U.S. for two adoptions in the early 2000s. She now tells friends “not to do it.”

Employees at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City saw a similar surge of Marshallese women coming in to give birth without any previous prenatal care — so-called “stop and drops,” said a nurse who asked not to be identified because she was not authorized by the hospital to speak to the media.

The women were all accompanied by Jauwe Simon, the adoption fixer for attorney Paul Petersen. The nurse noticed that many of the women didn’t have official identification or that the names on the ID didn’t match the ones they used in conversation.

“They don’t really understand the process,” the nurse said.

She was not the only one to notice. Social workers commissioned by Utah courts to go over consent documents with Marshallese women also saw the women deferring to Simon, leaving them wondering if the information was being thoroughly translated.

They brought their concerns to Larry Jenkins, a Utah attorney who had been representing adoptive families in some of Petersen’s cases. Jenkins and the social workers decided to hire an outside translator.

Journal Notebook

“There still is a lot of shadiness going on with each and every Marshallese adoption … I don’t feel that you can say one Marshallese adoption is 100 percent ethical, by any means.” — Breanna Gilchrist, former social worker at Washington Regional Medical Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

One social worker also urged adoptive parents to hire independent translators, writing in an email that anyone hired by Petersen “has a conflict of interest and should not be the translator … Please do not turn a blind eye to anything that is questionable, unethical, and/or immoral for the promise of having a baby.”

Petersen declined to talk to Civil Beat for this story. But Matthew Long, an attorney for Petersen, told Civil Beat that his adoptions are monitored by a variety of state regulatory agencies, bar associations and courts, and that none have found anything amiss.

“Mr. Petersen has complied with the law,” he said.

The LDS Hospital nurse said the surge came to a peak in the summer of 2017, when four or five women showed up in one week, including two in one night. Hospital workers notified management.

Soon after, the nurse said, the Marshallese mothers stopped showing up. She believes they now go to a hospital about 20 miles away, Jordan Valley Medical Center.

Jess Gomez, a spokesman for LDS Hospital, said he could not talk about Marshallese birth mothers except to say the hospital is “continuing to look into it.”

Jordan Valley Medical Center did not return calls seeking comment.

The Courts

Family court judges also could try to stop or call attention to illicit adoptions. But even in places where courts have become aware of the problem, they don’t — largely because they believe they lack jurisdiction to enforce federal immigration law.

And many of these adoptions occur in the home states of adoptive couples, where there’s often no knowledge of Marshallese people or their troubled history of adoptions.

In Washington County, Arkansas — which has one of the largest Marshallese populations in the U.S. — courts grappled with the best approach.

Journal Notebook

“Those numbers are very concerning. And I would, you know as a Marshallese person, I am questioning that why.” — Melisa Laelan, Marshallese court interpreter in Springdale, Arkansas.

This past spring Judge Doug Martin sat at his desk and thumbed through a large photo album with pictures of adoptive families cradling infants and smiling proudly.

“This is by far the most fun thing we get to do,” he said, smiling.

But his face quickly darkened as he flipped further in the book and pointed out the stark change in the demographics of adopted infants over the years.

Washington County, the third largest in Arkansas, is predominantly white. The growing Marshallese population still totals less than 5 percent.

Yet Martin and other judges say as many as nine of 10 adoptions involve Marshallese babies.

“The first year-and-a-half that I did them, I’ve gone back and looked, and there were zero Marshallese,” he said, shaking his head. That was around 2009.

As they learned more
more from the Marshallese community about the troubling history of Marshallese adoption, Washington County judges started requiring the birth mother to appear alone before a judge and give verbal consent, with a court-certified interpreter if necessary. The only court-certified Marshallese interpreter has done as many as six adoption cases in one day.

Washington County Judge Joanna Taylor said the consent hearings have helped some mothers to better understand their rights.

But judges say the process has also driven lawyers to finalize adoptions in places that don’t require consent hearings.

“They’ve just spread out to other parts of Arkansas,” Martin said. “So now they’re down in south Arkansas, and they cross over into Oklahoma to do the adoptions.”

Even when these judges hear directly from the birth mothers that they just arrived from the Marshall Islands, they balk at calling off the adoption.

In Martin’s court, he said, one mother “just flat out told me.”

“Who knows if this particular woman knew that it was a violation of the law,” Martin said. “But I wasn’t going to put her on a plane and send her back.”

Instead, he called the local police department, who told Martin it was not in their jurisdiction. He also spoke to the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arkansas. Several people told Civil Beat that the FBI or other agencies are looking into Marshallese adoptions, but no charges have been filed.

Melisa Laelan, a court translator in Springdale, Arkansas, hands out a survey to Marshallese women during a community meeting.

Charles Kaijo/Civil Beat

Enforcement of immigration law is mostly the responsibility of the federal government and not on the to-do list of Arkansas adoption judges.

“It’s an immigration issue, not an adoption issue,” said Jerry Sharum, senior counsel for the Arkansas Department of Human Services, which oversees interstate adoptions. “Arkansas law says if you can meet these requirements, you can adopt.”

Still, the adoptions weigh heavily on the Arkansas judges, who see American families, most from out-of-state, leave their courtrooms each week with Marshallese babies.

“It’s truly overwhelming,”
Taylor said. “I’m just basing my opinion that they are going to be good parents on paperwork that has crossed my desk, and the law allows me to do that. In fact, it requires me to.”

In Hawaii, another hub of Marshallese adoptions, court officials have known about the reemerging problem for at least 15 years. But as in Arkansas, the protections established by the courts stop short of halting unlawful adoptions.

It was not always that way. In the 2000s, after publicity about the exploitation of Marshallese birth mothers and legal reforms in the island nation, Hawaii family court judges responded by issuing memos detailing how these types of adoptions should be handled.

One memo required the birth mother to appear in court to give consent, with an interpreter if necessary. The judge would question her to make sure she understood how U.S. adoptions worked — that the mother, for instance, could not be assured of regular contact with the adoptive family.

A later memo went further, requiring the birth parents to get counseling from the official Marshallese adoption authority or an agency it designated. In essence, it banned adoptions that failed to go through the official Marshallese process.

Hawaii courts used to require special consent hearings for Marshallese birth mothers.

The memos were rescinded in 2010 as part of a broader effort to spell out court procedures in official rules rather than in memos.

But the black market continued, in Hawaii and elsewhere. In 2017, the Marshall Islands officially asked Hawaii to restore the memo requiring all adoptions to go through the central authority in Majuro.

“The issue is that certain adoption agencies and or individuals solicit the adoption of Marshallese children … directly with parents and without the knowledge of the Adoption Agency,” Amenta Matthews, minister of cultural and internal affairs, wrote to the Hawaii judges in 2017. “This conduct is illegal under the RMI Adoptions Act.”

Journal Notebook

“I did not sign any legal documents, or have anything to do regarding this adoption whatsoever … I seek and ask for help that this incident be looked upon by proper authorities as to seek justice and freedom for my son.” — Glass Glass, birth father of a child adopted in Texas in 2018

Hawaii did restore some of the earlier provisions, such as requiring interpreters if needed, and also put one judge in charge of all international adoptions in the interests of consistency.

But it did not block adoptions that failed to comply with Marshall Islands law and the treaty between the two nations. A Hawaii judge would have no basis to block an adoption involving a birth mother who came to the U.S. illegally, as long as she appeared in court to give consent.

Head family court judge Catherine Remigio
said Marshallese adoptions in Hawaii dropped from 19 in 2017 to zero so far this year. Some adoptions may be finalized out of state. Hawaii court spokeswoman Jan Kagehiro also says the tally of Marshallese adoptions is done by hand, making it susceptible to mistakes.

Loreta Bautista, a Marshallese mother who flew to Hawaii for her adoption, told Civil Beat she went in front of a Hilo judge multiple times with a court translator. Bautista said she was in court this summer, during a time when the courts said no such adoptions occurred, though the adoption may well have been finalized in the home state of the adoptive family and not shown up in Hawaii’s count.

Marshallese community members in Hilo say new people arrive often from the islands, including pregnant women.

Emily Dugdale/Civil Beat

Even in places where Marshallese adoptions regularly occur, a number of different judges may hear the cases so that none recognize a pattern.

In Arizona, for instance, two different adoptive parents of Marshallese children posted pictures on Facebook of themselves with different Maricopa County Superior Court commissioners who presumably finalized their cases. Civil Beat identified a number of cases in which the adoptive parents of a Marshallese baby lived in Arizona.

In general, the Maricopa County courts do not track the nationality of adopted children and don’t maintain any special process, as Hawaii and Arkansas courts do, for Marshallese adoptions. A Marshallese translator was called upon only three times in 2017, said courts spokesman Bryan Bouchard.

In 2006, a Maricopa judge did try to block an adoption as illegal under Marshall Islands law because the birth mother was flown to the U.S. contrary to the Compact of Free Association.

Attorney Paul Petersen and the adoptive family appealed the decision, and it was overturned because the lower court judge had improperly delegated his authority to determine the best interests of the child to an agency.

But the appellate court noted another hurdle — the Compact of Free Association does not have any provision that allows a court to reject an adoption if the treaty’s terms are violated. The adoption went through.

Adoption Regulators

Lawyers contend that adoptions involving Marshallese women who just flew to the U.S. are domestic, not international. So they finalize the adoptions through a special process governing adoptions between U.S. states.

It’s called the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children, or ICPC – an agreement between all 50 states that’s triggered when adoptive parents live in a different state than where the baby was born.

Utah, for instance, does not ask about the national origin of the birth mother, or even how long they’ve been in Utah, as long as they have a current address in the state, said Sal Pahulu, a compact specialist.

Pahulu and her colleagues said they were concerned to hear from Civil Beat that recently arrived Marshallese birth mothers live in a house owned by attorney Paul Petersen in West Valley City, a suburb of Salt Lake City, until they give birth and finalize adoptions through ICPC.

Arizona attorney Paul Petersen owns this house in Utah where pregnant women stay while waiting to give birth.

Emily Dugdale/Civil Beat

“People, unfortunately, when there’s money involved, find ways around that, which is really upsetting to us,” said spokeswoman Ashley Sumner.

In Hawaii, the Department of Human Services is aware of the problems with Marshallese adoptions. But on ICPC forms, birth mothers deny that they flew in directly from the Marshall Islands, the department’s Cynthia Goss said.

“When we explored that, we were not able to prove it,” she said.

ICPC administrators rely on parties in an adoption to notify them it’s happening. Otherwise, they have no way of finding out.

ICPC applications involving Marshallese mothers have been riddled with errors, Goss said. For instance, the birth mother may state that she does not know the name of the father, even though his name appears elsewhere in the paperwork.

Even if judges discover that the ICPC requirements were not met, in many states they can still approve the adoption if they find it’s in the best interest of the child. In these cases, delays can help the adoptive parents’ case. Adoption lawyers say the longer they’ve had the child, the stronger the bond and the more reluctant a judge to sever it.

Some legal experts think ICPC delays may be a deliberate tactic to avoid going in front of local judges in areas where Marshallese adoption is prevalent. Arkansas Judge Doug Martin, for example, attributes part of the decrease in the number of Marshallese adoptions he’s seen this year to ICPC filings.

Attorney Paul Petersen’s adoption guide encourages parents to use ICPC to finalize their adoptions instead of going in front of local judges in Arkansas. Scheduling the court-appointed translator for the required consent hearings “is a nightmare,” the guide says. For ICPC, all birth parents need to do is sign a consent form before a notary — no official translation required.

For American parents adopting Marshallese babies, legal niceties can take a back seat to the promise of getting a newborn far more quickly than they would going through the official route.

April Estrellon/Civil Beat

"I don’t want anybody to ever go through this ... I really feel like those girls — I just really feel like that community — is being taken advantage of."

An annual survey on domestic adoption through an agency shows adoptive families normally wait at least six months to a year for a match — and sometimes longer than three years. Adopting from China, for instance, can take longer than five years.

Black market Marshallese adoptions, by contrast, can be arranged in a few months, weeks, or even days.

But it means ignoring red flags, such as warnings in Facebook support groups about questionable attorney practices.

And it can be a heavy lift financially.

Journal Notebook

“And when I think about it, it makes me mad at the parents who took my baby.” — Kookie Gideon, Marshallese birth mother.

Many couples hoping to adopt a Marshallese child organize fundraisers or benefit concerts or take out personal loans to raise the tens of thousands of dollars in adoption lawyer fees and birth mother expenses.

Given negative publicity about Marshallese adoptions for more than a decade, many adoptive parents are naturally defensive.

Faith Walpole, an adoptive mother, told Civil Beat that she was kicked out of a Marshallese adoption support group on Facebook after raising concerns about the ethics of several adoption lawyers.

“There’s adoptive parents who just want a kid, and who don’t care to learn the back history,” she said. “There’s a lot of people who have their heads in the clouds — ‘what I don’t know is not going to affect me.’”

]]>There’s A Distinct Disconnect Between American And Marshallese Adoptionshttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/theres-a-distinct-disconnect-between-american-and-marshallese-adoptions/
Tue, 27 Nov 2018 10:01:13 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1309903“Customary” adoptions have been very common in the Marshall Islands for decades. Relatives or friends raise the child for a time without the birth parents ever relinquishing their connection. The idea that a piece of paper filed in a court could sever the tie between parent and child can seem absurd. The American style of […]

]]>“Customary” adoptions have been very common in the Marshall Islands for decades. Relatives or friends raise the child for a time without the birth parents ever relinquishing their connection. The idea that a piece of paper filed in a court could sever the tie between parent and child can seem absurd.

The American style of adoption is so foreign to traditional practices in the Marshall Islands that it’s difficult to assure that women from the Marshall Islands know exactly what they’re getting into when they give up a child to an American family.

Jessica Terrell/Civil Beat

Listen “There’s a lot of misunderstanding,” says Eldon Alik, the Marshallese consul general in Springdale, Arkansas. Alik was adopted by an aunt in the Marshall Islands.

Melisa Laelan, a Marshallese court translator and founder of a nonprofit serving the Marshallese community in Arkansas, says the idea can be summed up in a Marshallese expression — “jined ilo kobo” — that calls parenthood “that undeniable relationship that will last forever.”

Laelan added, “I think in a lot of cases we carry that over to the United States.”

The informal adoptions, or “child circulation,” strengthen extended family ties and expose children to different adult skills, according to Jini Roby, an attorney and professor of social work at Brigham Young University who advised the Marshall Islands on its adoption law and treaty.

April Estrellon/Civil Beat

ListenAlson Kelen, who leads the Canoes of the Marshall Islands in Majuro, was adopted as a child in a traditional Marshallese intra-family adoption.

Sometimes, the practice provides a social safety net for struggling birth parents.

The Marshall Islands recently put in place a process that allows a customary adoption to be registered with the nation’s high court, giving the adoptive parents legal status in proceedings such as an ensuing international adoption.

But even that step does not sever the rights of the birth parents, as routinely happens in U.S. adoptions.

Marshallese women who come to the U.S. for adoption are confronted with a much different system, where a signing a consent form usually means giving up the legal right of ever seeing the child again. And interviews with birth mothers suggest that many don’t fully understand, regardless of what is spelled out in legal language in documents they were asked to sign.

Jessica Terrell/Civil Beat

Listen “The word adoption, I don’t really like to use it,” says Anita Iban, seen here speaking at a Marshallese church in Springdale, Arkansas, where her husband is the reverend.

Several women said that they expected their children to return to them at the age of 18, a common misconception among the Marshallese.

Others said they believe they were guaranteed continued contact with their children, even though many state laws, including Hawaii’s, contain no provisions to enforce an open adoption.

In practice, many adoptions are “open” for only as long as the adoptive parents want them to be — as Kookie Gideon discovered when the San Francisco couple who adopted her child cut off all contact.

Gideon, who now lives in Ohio, said she’s envious of other birth mothers who maintain contact with their children.

“And when I think about it, it makes me mad at the parents who took my baby,” she said through a translator.

Kookie Gideon with her daughter at home in Ohio. She still longs for a child given up in an earlier adoption who she didn’t realize she would never see again.

Sarah Holm/Civil Beat

Earlier this year, Marshallese birth mother Emy Lejjena said she drove from Arkansas to Texas with a facilitator and translator in Marshallese adoptions, to the Dallas law office of an attorney specializing in Marshallese adoptions.

There, Lejjena handed over her 2-year-old son to a couple that she thinks lives in Alabama.

Editor's Note

This is article is part of Civil Beat’s investigative series “Black Market Babies.” Click here to read the other stories.

She doesn’t know for sure, she said, because the fixer never gave her the contact information, as promised, and then blocked her on Facebook. She said she and her brother went to his house to try to find out, but he wouldn’t answer the door.

The adoptive parents said that she would get monthly visits with her son and they would help with her living expenses. Lejjena said the parents and the attorney promised her son would return at 18. She would not have consented to a closed adoption, she says.

In a signed statement, the father, Glass Glass, back in Majuro, says he did not give permission for the adoption.